The girls gathered ’round the bar like gunslingers in a spaghetti western when they saw Alex making her way back along the center aisle with Pamela peeping out from behind. They had all heard there was a new girl and Erin, like always, was the first to react. She bodily took hold of a stunned Pamela and spun the girl dizzily. “Ack Alex. Throw her back. She’s not fully grown yet,” Erin gave Pamela a gentle push across the gathering circle of taller girls.
Jordan caught her. “She hasn’t been eating her Wheaties!” Jordan twirled Pamela into the arms of Tracy who grabbed her by the shoulders and twisting the girl, handed her off to Sissy. ”
Pamela, spinning like a top, had her arms up about her face and was laughing giddily as the girls passed her around like she was a kiddie’s doll. “No– no– no – ” she cried as they gently hazed her, bouncing her back and forth, jostling her, pinching her, snapping the elastic of her bikini bottoms and ticking her ribs. And all the while, Pamela was loving the attention.
She hadn’t expected to be manhandled by a flight-crew of tall aggressive girls but found they quite took her breath away and she was thrilled at the touch of their large hands on her body. “This is going to be great,” she blurted out, her eyes glistening when the others finally let her sag to the floor. She was panting from the exertion; both physically and, not surprisingly, sexually.
“Okay. Everyone back to work.” Alex stepped in to bring some sanity to the festivities. “Pamela, if you’ve quite recovered, come help me in the service area. The rest of you…” Alex brightly clapped her hands, “move it!”
Irene and Bev, sitting side by side in the cockpit, were working steadily down the flight-check when the music piped up.
Irene twisted in her seat to look out the side window. “What the hell?” She didn’t see musicians so the music had to be canned.
Thirty or so people were standing and, holding programs, they started clapping, their attention focused back toward the terminal. Irene counted three television vans. The glass doors burst open under an arch of colorful balloons and cameras turned to zero in. The Captain of the Colombian volleyball team, jogging easily, led her squad out onto the tarmac, quickly followed by the Americans.
To call the Colombian’s Amazonian was laughable. Herculean maybe. That’s not to say they were muscle-bound hulks. To the contrary, they had bodies that could make a grown man hold his penis and cry. They charged the Bikini-Bus on ripping thighs below tightly laced bikini bottoms, their abs like razorbacks, their tits knotted hard beneath open green team-jackets. The jackets were cut purposefully short, above the hip, giving an unobstructed peek at the girl’s ass tightly bound in a rollickin’ bikini bottom. The Americans followed, non the less athletic but lusher somehow. More rounded and fluid, showing off their red and white, rippling stars ‘n’ bars jackets.
The two teams lined up alongside the plane and smiled for the photographers. A forest of naked legs.
A dignitary approached the podium and began introducing the girls, one by one. As each girl stepped forward, she doffed her team-jacket and passed it to a waiting attendant. Then posing for the cameras clad only in her bikini, she waved madly before stepping back into line and loosely dropping her arms around the hips of the players on either side. Within short order, a lineup of twenty scantily clad girls stood before the cameras. The press went wild.
Someone tossed out a couple of volleyballs and the girls, reaching and stretching, batted the balls high into the air, jumping and straining to control the play. It was a free for all. Reporters on all sides closed in, snagged their favorite players for interviews. And all the while, Irene noticed, Brad English, in his blue uniform coat, managed to crowd into the shot. A big Hollywood grin and his arm around a girl, he raced like a starving jackal from photo opportunity to photo opportunity; like a politician looking for the last of the deciding votes. Irene wanted to vomit and turned away not hiding her disgust.
Ten minutes later the grips were rolling up the cables and the reporters were going over their notes. The team players lined up to claim their jackets and board the plane. The photographer from Stalker Magazine positioned himself beneath the boarding-steps to get close-ups of see-sawing crotches and rolling buttocks. Some of the girls objected to having a long lens focused up between their legs but there was little they could do. Beach volleyball was a sexy sport, and the girls were sex objects in a male dominated arena. Your body was your meal ticket. The rules were hard and fast: Play the game, next to naked, or go back to waitressing.
“There’s something I have to explain about the Ditz.”
Irene and Pamela were headed down the pathway from the Casino, their travel cases jogging along behind.
“Ditz. Our roommate?” Pamela asked.
“Yes. Well the thing is, she’s a bit of a free spirit, I guess. I mean, you’ll like her but her domestic habits are– well, unusual. I have to warn you.”
Pamela giggled. “She’s not a vampire or anything?”
Irene gave Pamela a withering look. “No, she’s not a vampire, just uninhibited. Ditz skinny dips in the ocean and doesn’t seem to care if anyone watches. We have an outside shower and there’s no curtain. Ditz is earthy. I never know what to expect when I walk in the door. She’ll be standing at the stove wearing nothing more than a pair of sandals and a sunhat with a big daisy sticking out the top.”
“She’s a nudist?” The look of surprise on Pamela’s face was worth a picture.
“Comfortable in her own skin,” Irene smiled. “Totally comfortable with a capital ‘C’ is how I would describe her.”
“But she’s attractive, right?” Pamela wanted to know. “I can deal with the nudity, but it has to be appealing.”
“Not a worry there,” Irene continued. “She’s got a body built of bricks; a little butchy maybe, but there isn’t a guy on the island that hasn’t dreamed of moving his luggage between her thighs and setting up housekeeping.”
“Oh my God,” Pamela squealed in delight. “Is this it? It’s right out of one of my old nursery rhyme books.”
They had rounded the final curve and the cabana came into view. “We call it Hobbit House,” Irene explained.
“Amazing,” Pamela whispered and lifted a hand to run her fingers over the letters carved into the driftwood nameplate nailed over the low mantle.
“Come inside. Meet Ditz,” Irene pushed the slatted wood door back. “I smell food.”
For once, Ditz was dressed. She stood by the gas cooker with a fork, poking at a cast iron skillet. She turned when she heard the door open. Ditz, with her hair gelled and combed straight back, wore a man’s white dress-shirt that ended at mid-thigh and a pair of white, three-inch pumps. Irene figured she was naked underneath but guessed that Pamela wouldn’t realize.
Ditz abandoned her stove and stepped across the room. “Oh look what you’ve brought me! Bambi!” she cried, gathering a startled Pamela up in her arms. Pamela all but disappeared into the larger woman’s bear hug, all except for her two legs dangling from beneath a London Fog trench coat, her feet having been lifted from her shoes.
“Oh gosh– oh gosh,” Pamela was laughing at the woman’s exuberance and trying to catch back the breath that was being squeezed from her lungs. “Put me down…” Her face was bright with surprise and anticipation.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Ditz gushed, dropping Pamela gently to the floor. “I’ve been cooking all morning.”
The two of them held each other at arm’s length, eagerly eyeing each other, positively glistening, their emotions buzzing like high-voltage. What is it, about these women, Irene wondered. They have some sort of internal antenna? She had the glum realization she may have placed the blowup mattress into the wrong bedroom.
The reception that evening, held on the terrace by the main pool, was nothing less than spectacular: The bar was open and the booze ran like a river. Scirocco had arranged for a live band, a team of chefs tended to a whole hog that had been slowly turning above a charcoal pit, and Irene noticed that a contingency of female staff members from the Casino had been pressed into service. Dressed in daring cocktail dresses and posing as guests, they floated in and out of the groups of men, placing suggestive hands on arms and shoulders.
But Melissa reset the bar when she strode onto the terrace. No one could compete with the big girl from LA: Beautiful, spoiled, and somehow, superior, Melissa wore a sequined pearl-colored dress with a rakish hemline that fell below the knee on the right but slashed diagonally upwards toward the opposite hip, leaving her left thigh exposed. Her impressive six-foot stature was further enhanced by four-inch spikes. The gaping low-slung yoke of the dress, draped in loose folds, barely contained the wobbly treats that threatened to pop free with each delirious stride. Every man within the scope of her formidable presence looked, and turned to look once more as she sought to find the bartender. Wives blushed and quietly cast their eyes toward the bushes.
There was a flash of blue dodging between the guests. Brad, in his fancy uniform coat, anticipating Melissa’s destination, sidestepped to head her off. He brought her to a surprised halt. “What can I get you?” he asked hopefully, even before her swaying breasts had a chance to settle. And, with a sense of loss, he realized he was looking up into her face. He had hoped the lifts in his shoes would have helped.
Melissa almost went over on an ankle in an effort to avoid running him down. And Brad didn’t win any points for his lack of subtlety. “How about a man,” Melissa bristled. “I’m looking for one with lots of money. A Robert Di Nero type would be acceptable, one that is tall enough to look me in the face.” She side-stepped Brad in her quest for a Black Russian; leaving him with the color coming up into his cheeks and pools of sweat gathering in his shoes.
Irene, who was close enough to enjoy the encounter, giggled inside: Serve you right, ass! Then she returned to mulling over her own personal dilemma: Jack Namath had lied to her.
But was it really a lie? –she turned the question over in her mind; more of a fabrication, Irene thought. And being an agent with the Treasury Department, it was kinda part and parcel with his job. It was obvious he was conducting some sort of investigation. Irene thought of the case strapped behind her seat on the flight to Grand Cayman. Was she an accessory to a crime? Was she being investigated? Could she be held accountable, even if she wasn’t privy to the contents of the case?
But more important, could she forgive Jack for leading her on? She thought of his strong features; his kind hands. Oh hell, she realized. She could forgive him anything, as long as he was prepared to take her into his bed.
She felt the hands move in from behind and touch her about the waist. “Oh Ja…” She turned, her arms lifting in anticipation of the embrace, but her stomach dropped as she met eyes filled with intense speculation. It was a voyeur’s leer. “Oh Ja–eezz!” Irene exhaled.